Apple is now the fourth-largest cellphone maker in the world, Gartner said in its own roundup of mobile market share figures. The iPhone’s market share of real, end-user sales shot up almost 92 percent from year to year to give it 4.6 percent, moving it ahead of not just RIM but Motorola and Sony Ericsson, all three of which lost share. Apple’s rise also widened its leads over ZTE, HTC, and Huawei, who despite their gains weren’t growing as quickly.
Nokia and Samsung were both at the top but down substantially in this view, to 22.8 percent and 16.3 percent each. Both have been slow to adapt to smartphones and weren’t growing smartphones quickly enough to offset the difference.
The new data also underscored Nokia’s dethroning in smartphones. Android’s combined share versus the Nokia-dominated Symbian inverted almost completely over a year ago, moving from 17.2 percent versus 40.9 percent to a reversed 43.4 percent to 22.1 percent. Apple was still making large strides in market share, though, and moved up over four points to 18.2 percent, making it entirely likely that the iPhone would eclipse Symbian and therefore Nokia in on-the-ground sales within the next few months.
